Chapel, Moat, Village, Workshop, Moneylender, Remodel, Spy, Thief, Throne Room, LibraryI'm a cheapskate who hasn't bought any expansions. That means that I've been playing a lot of Base only games recently. They're usually a bit dull, but it's not as boring as you would think.
Case in point:
https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160102/log.0.1451723379190.txtI've actually been burned by Thief in Base-only games a few times. It's only relevant with Chapel, but when both are in the game you do need to keep it in mind, as Thief will relentlessly punish a deck if you trash too thin.
My plan in this game is to trash down while using Workshop to gain Village, Throne Room, and Remodel. I pick up an early Silver to hit $5 for Library. For there, the ideal plan is to get actions from Throne Room, play Library, then play Workshops to gain pieces and Remodels to trash things up towards Provinces. That decreases the handsize for the next Library.
This is a bit convoluted, but with Chapel you can set it up pretty quickly. More importantly, this will completely demolish any deck that tries to get to $8 through treasures. All I have to do is gain a Thief from Workshop and it'll tear through those treasures. And, since my deck is so thin, I'll be able to draw the stolen treasures on the same turn. My opponent goes for Chapel as well, but overtrashes and buys more treasures than he should. I accordingly pick up a Thief, steal some Silver and Gold that I find through Spy attack, and use the swing to walk away with the game. My opponent's Moat helps stem the tide (and I pick one up too in case my opponent tries to go for Thief as well), but it doesn't help enough. Conceivably, picking up enough Moats lets you counter Thief, but if that ever happened I would just Remodel Thief into Library or Gold.
So, what do I want to get across?
- This was a surprisingly cool board. I picked up every action except Moneylender, and every single one served an important purpose. Even Spy - it gave me a quick way to check for Moat, and set up Thief steals. If I find out my opponent has Moat, I can skip Thief when playing Library.
- I picked my strategy in part because it gave lots of flexibility and countered other strategies well. The strength of cards like Workshop and Remodel is that they let you transform your deck when you need them to. I don't have to pick up Thief until I know it'll be good, and I can do so almost the same turn I play it.
- Base can often be boring, but that doesn't mean it always is.
- Yes, every card has a board that can make it shine.
Finally, now that I'm making this post, I see something that could be better than what I did, which I didn't even see in the game itself. Do you?
TR + Moat as main draw. All the Moats you need will protect against Thief, and the draw lets you play a Thief of your own if you want. To do this right you probably want a second Workshop, you need a lot more pieces to hit critical mass and there's no +Buy to pick up Moats easily.
